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Copyright © Andrzej Ostropolski 2010

Copyright © Andrzej Ostropolski 2010

Cordoras Melini will like plenty of plants and driftwood throughout the aquarium, with a central open area for swimming. They should be kept in schools of at least six. The fish are omnivores they will feed on live or frozen brine shrimps, blackworms, daphnia, algae wafers and sinking shrimp pellets. High quality flake food may be used as supplement. Breeding Cordoras Melini is not hard – the addition of new, clean, oxygenated water appears to be the primary stimulus for this species. During spawning, the males will follow the fertile female around and circle her. The eggs are no larger than 1.5 mm and can be left on the glass as well as on plants and spawning mops. Unlike many other catfish species, Corydoras Melini produce rather small batches sometimes less than 10-15 eggs. The eggs will hatch after 4-5 days if the water temperature is around 25ºC. At this point, the fry is around 4 mm and almost invisible from gravel. When the fry hatch, they will feed from their yolk sac for another 48 hours. As the first food for Corydoras Melini fry you can use microworms. As they grow larger, you can start giving them newly hatched brine shrimp and then gradually increase the size of the food. After four weeks they will be over 1 cm long and much thicker than when they hatched.